Under the Hammer: Sept. 22, 2016

The presidential election is less than 50 days away and Hillary Clinton has cancelled another event, this one a fundraiser in Chapel Hill.

She admitted that she cancelled the events in California last week because she needed to rest up and get over what must be the most unusual bout of pneumonia in medical history. This mild case of pneumonia caused her to have a persistent cough for months and then caused her to completely collapse while waiting to get in a Secret Service vehicle at the 9/11 memorial service in New York.

Now she has had a spell of crazy eyes where one eye doesn’t follow the other, no doubt caused by pneumonia, and this week she cancelled another event.

Something is seriously wrong with Hillary Clinton’s health and it is not a mild case of pneumonia.

She is dropping in the polls nearly everywhere and, instead of intensifying her efforts here in the homestretch, she is cancelling events.

It’s not just a mild case of pneumonia that is causing these problems. Although who knows whether she really has pneumonia or not. She took her personal doctor to the 9/11 memorial event, or she took her doctor’s body double.

If this were anyone else, the mainstream media would not allow the Clinton campaign to lie about the woman with her who looks exactly like her doctor, by claiming it’s not her doctor. But mostly the campaign hasn’t had to lie because the mainstream media have very little interest in outing Hillary Clinton’s health problems.

The mainstream media say that she “stumbled” getting into the vehicle, which is simply not true. She had to be lifted, and her aides and the Secret Service agents almost dropped her. In the video you can see her feet dragging the ground, which is how she lost a shoe.

No one has explained why someone in such obvious physical distress was not taken immediately to an emergency room. But if this happens “frequently,” as Bill Clinton said before he corrected himself, that would explain it.

The question is, why does it happen frequently. Hillary Clinton said she didn’t faint, but then again can you believe anything Hillary Clinton says about anything? She also said there was no classified information on her email server.

There is mounting evidence that her campaign is falling apart. Certainly Robby Mook, who has the title of campaign chair, isn’t privy to important information like the fact that the candidate was diagnosed with pneumonia or how long she planned to be off the campaign trail.

Hillary Clinton is not capable of running her own campaign, she can’t even walk up three or four steps without assistance. Reports are that several of her long-time aides and her daughter, Chelsea, are giving orders and the campaign staff doesn’t know who they are supposed to listen to.

The Hillary Clinton campaign is beginning to look like a comedy routine where a bunch of guys are trying to hide the fact that one of their buddies is too drunk to walk. Except this is a presidential campaign, not some bad comedy routine.

The evidence that Hillary Clinton has a serious health problem is becoming so obvious that even the mainstream media can’t completely ignore it anymore.

Can you imagine what the mainstream media would be writing if Donald Trump left an event and had to be carried into a car, or had to have assistance climbing up the steps to the podium?

It is possible that Hillary Clinton will be so sick on Monday that she won’t be able to debate Trump.

When they prop Hillary Clinton up behind a podium she can give a reasonably good speech, if you can ignore the crazy eyes. But in a debate she won’t be able to read her answers off a teleprompter. It could be a disaster, and at this point it wouldn’t be at all surprising for her to have to cancel her debate appearance because of pneumonia, or maybe it’s the flu like Bill Clinton said.

It’s a tough call for the Hillary Clinton brain trust, but a bad debate performance could completely tank her campaign.

The American people are a forgiving bunch and if she is too sick to debate she may get some sympathy support.

One question under consideration has to be whether or not she can make it through a 90-minute debate where she has to speak without reading from a teleprompter. She is famously slow on her feet, and although the moderators will handle her with kid gloves, Donald Trump won’t. He’ll get his zingers in for as long as she is able to stay on the stage.

Probably the worst thing that could happen would be if she decides to go through with the debate and then has to drop out before it is over.

The debate really has no upside for Hillary Clinton. She isn’t going to beat Donald Trump even when she attempts to use the well-prepared zingers the Clinton group has spent months writing and tried out before focus groups to get the wording just right. The best she can hope is for it not to be a disaster.

*****

What is it with Democratic leaders who don’t want to admit that radical Islamic terrorism exists in the US?

How many Americans have to be wounded and killed before the Democrats will admit that these are not random acts of violence, but in some cases well thought out and well prepared terrorism attacks? Some are not well planned, but if someone is killed it doesn’t matter to them or their family whether a lot of planning went into the attack or not.

Ahmad Khan Rahami was evidently much better at making bombs than at setting them off. Having lived in the US for years he should know that homeless people go through the trash, but fortunately he did not. He didn’t manage to kill anyone with the two bombs that he did set off, or the ones that he placed but didn’t detonate, but it wasn’t because he didn’t try.

He did create panic and gridlock in New York, and if he had been a better bomber he could have created a lot more havoc.

What we do know is that there are a lot more men and women like him in the US – radical Islamic terrorists who are just waiting for orders, or an opportunity, to try and kill as many Americans as possible.

He reportedly went to Afghanistan and hung out for a year in an area known as a hotbed of radical Islamic terrorism. This should have set off some alarms somewhere in the federal government. Going to visit your family is one thing, but going to a place known for radical Islamic terrorism should have resulted in someone investigating him.

We spend billions of dollars so that Homeland Security can search 90-year-old women and babies in diapers at airports, but the department doesn’t seem to notice when an American goes and spends a year in an area of the world where Islamic terrorists are trained. It would make a lot more sense to quit spending so much time and money searching people with absolutely clean records and paying more attention to men like Rahami who fit the profile of Islamic terrorists. But the current administration thinks that would be profiling

*****

President Barack Hussein Obama told a group of fundraisers in New York, “This should not be a close election, but it will be.”

Obama is wrong again. Unless there is some drastic change in the election between now and Nov. 8, it isn’t going to be close. Trump is going to win big.

Coming down to the final weeks of the election, Clinton is cancelling events. Reports are that her ground game – meaning the local offices and get-out-the-vote campaign – is in shambles.

She was hurt because Sen. Bernie Sanders was so popular with young people who have always provided the troops for the Democratic campaigns. The Sanders people might have come over to her side when she won, except for the release of the Democratic National Committee emails, which showed the DNC conspired with the Hillary Clinton campaign to defeat Sanders.

Also, Sanders had a message he believed in. Hillary Clinton has a message she reads from the teleprompters. If she believes in anything other than the fact that it is her turn to be president, it hasn’t become evident in this campaign.

When she should be out inspiring the troops, she is out giving the same tired old speech she has been giving for years about how hard she has worked for women and children, although there isn’t much evidence that she has ever done much of anything for women and children except collect a bunch of awards for supporting women and children.

Trump has the momentum, and in presidential races momentum is more important than poll numbers. If he can keep the momentum going, he’s going to win big by not only winning all the traditional Republican states and adding the swing states, but he’s also going to win some Rust Belt states that were considered out of reach.

This late in the game, when a campaign starts falling apart, it is tough to get it going again. It can be done with extreme effort by the candidate, but Hillary Clinton appears to be unable to make that effort. Certainly taking three days off didn’t revive her.

Hillary Clinton and Obama can crow about the great economy all they want, but people know from their own pocketbooks that it isn’t true.

Trump has the momentum and can afford to give less rousing speeches for a while, although it will be shocking if he doesn’t get some more fire in his speeches coming down the home stretch. Hillary Clinton cannot.

As she says, she’s not very good at the public part of governing, and at this point that is the part that counts.

And then there are the emails. A federal judge has ordered the State Department to stop stalling and produce the next round of emails. It sounds like the judge is close to putting some folks in jail for contempt if they don’t comply with a federal court order, which should be enough to get even the moribund State Department moving.

Maybe one of the federal judges involved will get really frustrated and order Secretary of State John Kerry into his courtroom to answer questions about why the State Department won’t comply with orders from a federal judge.

Then there is WikiLeaks, which has promised another big dump of emails before the election. These are supposed to be even more damning than the first set.

Finally, there are the debates starting on Monday, if Hillary Clinton doesn’t cancel, which seems like a real possibility. But whether she takes a big hit for cancelling the debate for health reasons or faces Trump on the stage, it is a disaster waiting to happen for her campaign.

One thing is certain about Trump, he knows how to win a debate. He has an uncanny knack for destroying opponents with a few words and dominating the debate stage like no political candidate since Ronald Reagan.

All of those years of reality television may not have prepared Trump to be the president but it certainly prepared him to perform in front of the cameras. He won every Republican debate and, unlike Hillary Clinton, who is diminishing before our eyes, he appears to be the same strong, hardheaded, politically incorrect candidate that launched his campaign in June 2015. At that time no one outside the Trump campaign thought he had a chance of being on the presidential debate stage in the fall as the Republican Party candidate.

*****

The mainstream media keep trying, but the videos of Hillary Clinton are foiling their attempt to convince the American people that Hillary Clinton is healthy.

The storyline the mainstream media are trying to help Hillary Clinton sell the American people is simply unbelievable. If Donald Trump attempted something like this, it would be on the front page every day.

Hillary Clinton has had a persistent cough that lasts for up to four minutes; that’s a long time to be coughing and unable to stop. The mainstream media attacked anyone who found it unusual.

First the story was that it was nothing. Then, when it persisted, the story was that it was caused by allergies. The latest story is that it was caused by pneumonia, which Hillary Clinton was diagnosed with on Sept. 9. Then, on Sept. 11, Hillary Clinton had what appeared to be a seizure and was carried into her van. The mainstream media reported this as stumbling getting into the van. She didn’t stumble, her legs were dragging, and it appears that the aides almost dropped her because they evidently thought her legs were working and they were not.

Dr. Lisa Bardack, who accompanied Hillary Clinton to the 9/11 memorial event, can be seen having Hillary Clinton squeeze her fingers. This is a common neurological test, not a test for pneumonia. But according to the mainstream media, the pneumonia, which no one, not even top level staffers, were told about, is the explanation for the seizure.

Pneumonia doesn’t cause seizures in otherwise healthy people, although it may have contributed to this one, if Hillary Clinton in fact does have pneumonia. If she did and she is being open and honest with the voters, why didn’t she simply announce that she had pneumonia?

Hillary Clinton is unsteady on her feet and has been for some time. She goes up and down stairs like someone who is ill, not someone with allergies or pneumonia or whatever she has. When she is at the podium she is constantly leaning on it and often grasps it with both hands like she is trying to stay upright on a ship in a storm, not simply standing behind a podium.

As a presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has a responsibility to come clean about her health. Bardack said that Hillary Clinton had had an ear infection, which can lead to balance problems. Is that the problem that Hillary Clinton is having standing and walking?

The mainstream media are not doing the public any favors by helping Hillary Clinton cover up her health problems and there is no way that a case of pneumonia so mild that her doctor allowed her to attend a memorial service explains a persistent cough for months, her problems standing and walking or her recent collapse.

Are the weird blue sunglasses that she wore at the 9/11 event due to her health problems? She appeared to be the only one at the event in sunglasses, and how many people wear blue tinted sunglasses?

Maybe Judicial Watch can file a lawsuit and get to the bottom of it. It was only because of the lawsuit by Judicial Watch and others that the public found out that Hillary Clinton had a private homebrew server handling her emails while she was secretary of state.

*****

I’ve been covering, interviewing and spending my working day with politicians for more than 25 years. One lesson I keep learning over and over again is that people don’t change.

Once a politician lies to me about something important, I no longer trust anything they say. By something important I mean how they are going to vote on a controversial issue, whether they really had a private meeting with someone or blasted someone in an email, not some obscure fact in their resume.

But once somebody lies to me I’m pretty much done with them. I don’t mean this in a mean way, but I don’t have any use for them if I have to double and triple check everything they say.

Once a liar always a liar is true on the playground, true in Greensboro, true in Raleigh, true in Washington and true in the White House.

Everyone in the country knows that Hillary Clinton is a liar. She lies about big things and small things; so why believe anything she says? The number of lies she managed to tell about her emails as secretary of state is mind-boggling. She even lied about the fact that FBI Director James Comey said she was telling the truth.

And she has yet to come clean about the whole deal, apparently because the truth is worse than the lies. More people in this country believe that Bigfoot exists than believe Hillary Clinton is honest. But you have to wonder if the Hillary-Clinton-is-honest believers are a subset of the Bigfoot believers. The survey I want to see is how many people who believe in Bigfoot also believe Hillary Clinton is honest.

*****

Hillary Clinton thinks I’m “a deplorable” because I support Trump, which, by the way, you would think a Yale-educated lawyer would know is an adjective, not a noun. There is no such word as deplorables, something that the left-wing media would have crowed about if Trump had used the non-word to describe the supporters of his opponent.

I imagine I am a deplorable because I believe that radical Islamic terrorists have killed innocent people all over the world, and that apparenlty also makes me Islamaphobic. I would say that makes me a realist. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the terrorists who have killed so many people in the US, Great Britain, France, Spain and Germany, to name a few, have all been radical Islamic terrorists, but according to Obama and Hillary Clinton it is.

*****

The left is extremely good at shunning people who don’t agree with them. It’s done it with the entire climate change issue. I’ve read everything I can find and have yet to see the link between man-made carbon compounds and the increase in temperature. According to the liberal media that makes me a drooling idiot.

Just like if you mention that it was odd that President Obama refused to release his birth certificate, you are a birther and probably wear an aluminum foil hat to bed every night.

Trump is being raked over the coals for not releasing full tax returns and Hillary Clinton is being forced to release more complete medical records.

But the mainstream media had no interest in why Obama refused to release his birth certificate. As in so many news stories, it’s not the story itself but the cover-up. In this case maybe Obama was just being obstinate. But really, a birth certificate? It’s not considered by most people to be a highly confidential document, so the fact that he refused to release it until Trump sent private detectives to Hawaii to find out what the deal was is a story, or would be except it’s about Obama and the press has zero curiosity about Obama before he became president.

When Obama was elected president, most of what was known about his background came from his own book Dreams From My Father, which even Obama admits is not accurate because it has characters in it that don’t exist and some of the events were made up. So we do know that even what we think we know may not be true.

*****

The Los Angeles Times poll shows Trump with over 19 percent support from black voters. Another poll showed Trump with 19 percent support of black voters in Florida. If Trump can pull anywhere close to 19 percent of the black vote, first it would be historic, and second there is no way that Hillary Clinton can win.

Democrats depend on something above 90 percent of the black vote in every close election. It’s the reason blacks are left out of the whole political process. The Democrats give lip service to black voters but don’t do much for black communities because they need to spread their time and money to get white voters in strategic areas and they know they have the black vote.

Republicans have never done much to try to attract black voters because they knew that it was a lost cause. Democrats feel like they can ignore black voters because they’re going to get their votes no matter what and Republicans have been able to ignore black voters because it didn’t matter what they did, they knew they couldn’t win many black voters.

If Trump can stay in the 20 percent range with black voters, it completely changes the dynamics, not just of elections but of government. We would end up with a government that was better for everyone. Republicans would start paying more attention to black voters if they knew they had a chance at winning some of those votes and Democrats would have to do more than just give lip service to black voters because they would know they could lose a significant portion of the black vote.

*****

The bomb that went off in New York injuring 26 people but, fortunately, not killing any one was, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio, “an intentional act” but not a terror attack. If the bomb was intentional, and I’m trying here to imagine what an unintentional bomb would look like, then it is by definition a terror attack. It was not an attack on a military installation. It was an attack to try and wound and kill civilians and cause disruption of life in New York. It was a terrorist attack; we don’t have another word for it.

In the weird world of the mainstream media, Trump was criticized for calling the bomb a bomb. Did other people believe that the dumpster just jumped out into the road, that it spontaneously exploded? If dumpsters periodically exploded for no apparent reason there wouldn’t be one at every apartment complex in the country. They wouldn’t be lined up in alleys in downtown areas if nobody ever knew when one might explode.

It was a bomb and everyone with any sense knew it was a bomb, and it was another attack by a radical Islamic terrorist, even though the Democrats can’t bring themselves to admit it

We have no hope of winning the war against radical Islamic terrorism if the government won’t admit that it exists and is killing people. The first step to solving any problem is admitting that the problem exists. As long as someone is in denial about the existence of a problem, it’s only going to get worse.

*****

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Obama can blame on President George W. Bush. It seems like after eight years Obama would bear some responsibility, but Obama is not good at taking responsibility for anything that goes wrong. If he were a coach he would blame his team when he lost, never his game plan. But when he won he would take all the credit and never mention in the post game interview how well the team played.

But Obama has to take full responsibility for the war in Syria, where in the midst of what was supposed to be a ceasefire everyone is attacking everyone else.

The Russians or Syrians bombed a Red Crescent relief convoy that was bringing food and medical supplies to Aleppo. Earlier American planes bombed Syrian troops that were reportedly thought to be ISIS troops.

The Turks have attacked Kurdish fighters who we are backing, but we are also backing the Turks. ISIS attacks everyone, and when they are not attacking each other everyone else attacks ISIS.

It appears to be mass confusion and it is all Obama’s doing. He can’t blame this one on Bush.

First he tried to ignore the whole problem saying that it would go away and then, when ISIS took the second largest city in Iraq, Obama had to admit that there might be a problem but he has refused to do much about it other than complain and talk about what he was doing. Flying planes around that aren’t dropping bombs may scare some folks the first time around, but after you’ve done it for a couple of months it’s just another plane in the sky.

The fact that the US bombed Syrian troops can also be blamed on Obama because he refuses to put ground troops in so the bombers have good intelligence. It’s really hard to tell who is who from thousands of feet in the air without reliable information from the ground, and with so much confusion about who is fighting who, it is understandable that US planes would bomb the wrong troops.

One thing about the wars in Syria that seem certain is that whoever wins the presidential race is going to inherit a mess. Hopefully, whoever wins will listen to the generals and admirals about military tactics. Obama doesn’t like military men and prefers to take advice from his staff with no military experience, which goes a long way toward explaining the mess he has created in the Middle East.

*****

I know that those in favor of gun control aren’t going to like this, but for the second time a radical Islamic terrorist bomber has used pressure cookers to make bombs, but there is no push to ban civilian ownership of pressure cookers.

In Minnesota, a radical Islamic terrorist used a knife to attack people but there is no call from President Obama to ban knives.

Can you imagine the outcry if both had used AR-15 rifles to attack people? Obama would be beside himself to get AR-15s banned for civilian ownership.

It would be far easier to ban buying pressure cookers because there is no constitutional protection guaranteeing Americans the right to own pressure cookers, but guns do have such a protection.

*****

Is it any wonder that Department of Homeland Security is responsible for approving over 800 immigrants for citizenship who were supposed to be deported? In true Homeland Security style it wasn’t their fault because of poor record keeping.

It is Homeland Security’s fault, just like allowing 90 percent of the weapons and bombs through the airport checkpoints during a test was their fault.

The federal government is not known for efficient and effective government agencies, but Homeland Security wins the award hands down for the least effective federal agency.

President George W. Bush invented the agency, which was one of his dumber ideas, and Obama, as with so many things, has taken a bad idea and managed to make it much worse.

If Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson were not a good friend of Obama’s there is no way he would still have a job.

*****

I keep reading that former President George H.W. Bush is going to vote for Hillary Clinton. I have no idea if this is true, but I do know that the report is not from Bush or his staff but from former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who said that Bush told her he was going to vote for Hillary Clinton.

The Bush press secretary said that his vote is private. Unverifiable statements are not usually reported by legitimate news agencies as facts, unless of course the unverifiable fact fits in with their own strongly held political beliefs, as it does in this case.

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